Sunday, 7 August 2011

Black Swans & Fallen Angels

If you haven't read The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb it's the most erudite permission-to-believe-in-the-unexpected book I've read. Intellectually it opened up my mind to the potential of radical possibility and so I started to think my analysis of Capitalism might have some validity and rejected the whole model of senseless consumption via fiat currencies, floated on derivative trading, lorded over by globalised slave labour while hacking down forests, depleting oceans and strip mining mother Earth's crust.

His first book Fooled By Randomness is in my opinion an even better read but the reason for posting this tonight is I believe that an overdue economic collapse is under way. I know I said that in 2008, and yes it was premature (and wishful thinking, the dollar is one tough cockroach) but I wasn't wrong about the unquestioned venal greed of the system.

All around the world ordinary people are increasingly uncomfortable with a paradigm that is destroying the planet, poisoning our environment and fuelling a superficial worship of materialist-science as saviour, slavish tech-fetishm and contemptuous poverty-blindness. It's a religion with it's own callous Gods no superior to the Jehovahs of the old Testament.

I don't know if tomorrow is going to be the long overdue market bloodbath of a system that isn't sustainable but I welcome its impending demise, and the potential for transformational change in how we see ourselves as a species and the planet as a living being.

If anyone in Bangkok wishes a hardback copy of the The Black Swan, I have a hard copy I've read twice and no longer need.

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